Zigbee, Another Option For Wireless Communication System

Zigbee technology may not as popular as WLAN or Bluetooth. But, this technology is starting to rise competing the mainstream standard of wireless. With the certain characteristics of networking system, there are many new technologies that starting to use this kind of networking standard.

Just take a look at Handheld Transceiver (HT), or you can see it at drone. All of these current technologies employ Zigbee as its basic connectivity.

Further, with the unique characteristics, Zigbee is also suited to be applied in several other devices.

What Zigbee Actually Is

Talking about history a little bit, the principle of Zigbee technology was developed at 1998 by HomeRF alliance. Then, in 2003, it was standardized before revised in 2006. But for now, the one who maintain this technology is replaced to Zigbee alliance.

This is an alliance that consists of more than 300 major companies in technology such as Mitsubishi Electric, Philips, Atmel, Epson, Texas Instrument Inc. and many others. This alliance is responsible in promoting, designing, and supervising the application of it.

Zigbee is aimed to be used at home automation. In the signaling and control, this kind of connection employs Radio Frequency. Further, talking about operation, this technology is actually a kind of connection that operates based on the IEEE 802.15.4 protocol.

This protocol is aimed to create high level of personal network area that has small and low digital radio power. Even if its power is low, the transmission distance is quite large, about 10-100 meters.

With that low level of power, this connection is aimed to result on the cheaper price and simpler protocols. It is even claimed to be much simpler WPANs like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Even though, we can’t really compare Zigbee to Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

It is because basically they have really different purposes. Zigbee is aimed for fulfilling the needs toward simple structure of data communications such as sensors. While for Bluetoth and Wi-Fi, they are aimed for complex data structure and large amount of data transfer.

The Use of Zigbee Protocols

Taking about use, Zigbee has wide range of usage. As stated in our previous article, it can be used in Handheld Tranceiver and Drone. But, for the further usage, many people employs this technology for wireless light switches, traffic management system, sensors, electrical meters, and others.

Mostly, the one who employs this connection in its operation is the one which needs low rate and short range wireless data transfer. Further, one of the benefits of using Zigbee is that you can enlarge the battery life. It is because this connection is having low data rate in its application with 250 kbit/s.

But, there’s still a lack in using this kind of data transfer. It is because this tech is only open for non-commercial usage. So, when you are about to use it in commercial goods, you require to join the alliance. This rule is causing a lot of conflict, especially among the open-source developer, with license of several free softwares.

Zigbee Requires SDPPI Approval Before Distributed in Indonesia

As stated before, Zigbee is using RF in its operation. Therefore, it is classified to telecommunication device, which needs approval before being distributed in certain country. While for Indonesia, the approval itself called SDPPI Type Approval certification.

This is a certification regulated by Indonesian Ministry of Telecommunication and Informatics. So, before distributing this device in Indonesia, manufacturers need to deal with this kind of regulation first. So at the end their devices can be well distributed legally inside the nation.

In closing, we are happy to share you the news toward technological updates. But, we will be even more happier when we receive critics, advice, and other kinds of support. Therefore, if you have any thoughts or opinion toward this article, or toward the content of this article, we are welcoming you to put them in the comment section below. Your feedback means a lot to us. Finally, that’s all of the information we could share, hope it will be functional and beneficial in updating your technological knowledge.